The Permission to Disappear
You don’t need to be everywhere. Being everywhere might be exactly what’s keeping you from mattering anywhere.
The data: 43% monthly burnout. 80% authenticity tax. 2% of listeners generating 18% of streams, buying most tickets. Two percent. While you craft thirty-second videos for three-second attention spans, those two percent wait for something worth their Tuesday night.
Phoebe Bridgers: indie venues before virality. JPEGMAFIA: direct releases to seekers. Soccer Mommy: local scenes, blog coverage. They understood: Real fans don’t need to be caught. They need to be served.
The Trade
Email lists become sold-out shows. Venue relationships outlast platform changes. One superfan outweighs fifty scrollers. Every algorithm chased is a relationship unchased. Every metric tracked is a conversation untracked.
The math: One dedicated fan equals fifty casual followers. One memorable show equals thousand forgotten posts. One direct sale equals hundred algorithmic maybes.
The Truth
Algorithms finding you? Beautiful. Bonus. Gift. But depending on algorithms to find you? That’s fear dressed as strategy.
The difference: Building something worth finding versus needing to be found to matter. Creating for the algorithm versus creating something algorithms eventually notice. Chasing viral versus being inevitable.
When Spotify’s algorithm discovers you because you’ve already built something real, that’s amplification. When you need Spotify’s algorithm to exist, that’s dependency.
The Choice
Replace Instagram time with venue relationships. TikTok creation with newsletter writing. Follower counting with fan conversations. Viral hoping with consistent showing up. Content calendars with concert calendars.
The permission structure: You can welcome algorithmic discovery while refusing algorithmic dependency. You can be findable without being desperate. You can let the internet amplify what already works instead of hoping it creates what doesn’t.
This isn’t easier. Easy was never the point.
The permission you’re seeking? You just gave it to yourself.
Now disappear from everywhere that doesn’t matter. Appear where you do. Let the algorithms catch up when they’re ready.
